TO END A CRISIS: VISION FOR BC DRUG

POLICY

Endorsed By:
Canadian Drug Policy Coalition (CDPC)
Pivot Legal Society
British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA)
B.C. Health Coalition
B.C. Poverty Reduction Coalition
Surrey Newton Union of Drug Users (SNUDU)
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 5536
SOLID Outreach
Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU)
Vancouver District Labour Council (VDLC)
Workers for Ethical Substance Use Policy (WESUP)
B.C. Association of People on Methadone (BCAPOM)
Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War (CPDDW)
Care Not Cops
Nanaimo Community Action Team
Nanaimo Area Network of Drug Users (NANDU)
Mountainside Harm Reduction Society
Living Positive Resource Centre
Prisoners’ Legal Services
Coalition of Substance Users of the North (CSUN)
Chilliwack Community Action Team
Rural Empowered Drug Users’ Network (REDUN)
Harm Reduction Nurse’s Association (HRNA)
Dudes Club Society
AVI Health and Community Services
Mom’s Stop the Harm
Kilala Lelum Health and Wellness Cooperative
Disability Alliance of BC
BC Association of Social Workers
(Current as of March 15th 2024)
The so-called “war on drugs'' originated at the intersections of settler-colonialism, racism, and
class-based oppression.1 Drug policies in BC and across Canada continue to be steeped in and
reproduce these harmful structures. An overwhelming body of evidence demonstrates that
prohibitionist policies function to: increase social inequalities on the bases of race, class, culture,
gender, and ability;2 exacerbate negative mental and physical health outcomes;3 and decrease
public safety.4 Prohibition is the direct cause of thousands of fatalities every year, with drug
toxicity accounting for at least 2,511 preventable deaths in BC in 2023.5 Criminal justice and
medical models alike have allowed the unregulated drug crisis to continue unabated. We assert
that neither model will offer healing, justice, or liberation for communities most harmed by the
war on drugs and its attendant conditions.

We call on all levels of government to urgently change course. We imagine nothing short of a sea
change. This document therefore represents a significant departure from the status quo. It provides
a roadmap for designing and implementing drug-related policies that are grounded in anti-racist
and anti-colonial frameworks and are inspired by the principles of autonomy, choice, and
compassion. We contend that contemporary drug policies must eliminate all forms of policing,
coercing, medicalizing, and demonizing drug users. They must be tailored to the unique values,
world-views, and material conditions of drug consumers. For too long, consumers’ basic human
rights have been subordinated by an ideological agenda that was designed by the limited
imaginations of a powerful few.

Our recommendations address four related areas of drug policy for immediate and substantive
reform: Drug regulation; Decriminalization; Addressing substantive equality in drug policy
reform, and; Detox, recovery and treatment. We conclude with a discussion of the principles
and scientific evidence that inform our recommendations.

Policy, Political and Regulatory

Recommendations
Drug Regulation

1. Work with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC to liberalize opioid and stimulant
prescribing methods, as well as reduce audits targeted at physicians working within the
drug toxicity crisis. Invest in education for the Regulatory Colleges about safe supply and
drug regulation as mechanisms for preventing drug toxicity related deaths.

2. Remove the need for ‘Special Authority’ for all applicable substances, drugs and
medications that could reduce overdose fatalities to be covered under Pharmacare Plan G.
 3. Create a legal framework for the establishment of community-controlled drug use sites
where patrons can also access a regulated supply of drugs on-site. Choice of substances
should be wide-ranging to address autonomous decision-making around potency, route of
consumption, etc.

These measures will create a safer, more communal and mutually supportive environment for
people who use drugs while directly addressing the drug toxicity and overdose crisis.

Decriminalization

4. Either remove threshold amounts in their entirety, or immediately scale up the

decriminalized personal possession threshold to 28 grams (1 oz) for all illicit drugs,
including those currently excluded such as ketamine and benzodiazepines to remove police
to the greatest degree possible from drug users' lives.

5. Introduce a civilian-run complaints pathway for those who have been impacted by police
misconduct arising out of BC's new decriminalization policy, including but not limited to:
unjust seizure of personal supply, improper distribution of resource cards, arrests of below
threshold amounts, and street checks. The complaints pathway should be transparent,
formally removed from police influence, and incorporate enforceable mechanisms for
police accountability.

6. Make a formal commitment to re-directing and reinvesting funds currently allocated to law
enforcement into improving the accessibility of health services to prevent and treat
overdose, HIV, HCV, and other infections; mental health services; harm reduction services
such as supervised consumption, drug checking, and needle and syringe programs; health
services such as opioid agonist therapy (OAT) (including injectable forms), safe supply
programs to provide quality-controlled alternatives to drugs from the unregulated market,
and other forms of medication and treatment to manage substance use; and other forms of
healing and support for people who use drugs.

7. Eliminate “criminalization by stealth,” which includes any municipal bylaws or policies

that prohibit, unreasonably limit, or create offenses for the use, possession, or distribution
of substances in or near public spaces that are contrary to the spirit of the province’s
decriminalization framework.

8. Directly advocate at the provincial level for the federal government to fully repeal Section
4 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and Section 8 of the Cannabis Act and to
automatically expunge any records of previous convictions for substance use and
trafficking, including breaches of probation/bail related to these situations.
 9. Formally call for the abolition of the federal-level Controlled Drug and Substances Act
(CDSA) through a motion in the provincial legislature, and present this to their federal
government counterparts.

These measures will decouple policing from substance use in accordance with the stated objectives
of decriminalization. They will allow people who use drugs to seek formal and community-based
support without fear of criminal sanctions.

Addressing substantive equality in drug policy reform

10. Non-prescriber models should be implemented through not-for-profit frameworks that

directly benefit those most impacted economically and socially by prohibitionist drug
policies.

11. Commit to a provincial social equity fund that administers non-repayable grants to those
who have experienced disproportionate drug war-related harms such as mass incarceration
or overdose as a form of competitive advantage.

12. Commit to funding programs that alleviate poverty such as social services and affordable
housing, food security projects, tripling the welfare rate as recommended by other groups 6
and education.

13. Commit to funding groups led by and for people who use drugs that provide opportunities
for people who use drugs to engage in their communities while being appropriately
compensated for their knowledge and expertise.

14. Ensure funds are adequately distributed to the communities most affected by decades of
police surveillance, profiling, violence, racism, and injustice, paying special attention to
inequities between urban and remote, rural, and on-reserve communities.

15. Introduce specific funding and opportunities for voluntary support for parents who have
been involved with the child welfare system. Ensure that drug use alone is not a justification
for taking children into state custody and/or separating children from their families, and
that decisions about state intervention are made by addressing the objective welfare of the
child(ren), not stereotypes about drug use.

These measures will address some of the root social issues that create and perpetuate cycles of
poverty and marginalization for people who use drugs.

Detox, recovery and treatment

 16. Create a centralized provincial database of all substance use treatment services and
facilities. It should clearly detail the out-of-pocket cost for individuals seeking services,
the total dollar amount of government investment in each service, and the treatment
modalities available. Specific, standardized, and transparent mechanisms should be
designed to track each service’s outcomes.

17. Develop a standardized regime of care for substance use treatment patients in collaboration
with people who use drugs that is grounded in clinical best practices and contemporary
evidence.

18. Develop a provincial accreditation system that includes strict regulatory oversight and
assigns government representatives to intervene when treatment centers depart from
expected standards of care.

19. Ensure that public funding for treatment is contingent upon regularly demonstrating that
standards of care are being upheld.

20. Ensure that 12-Step programming, such as Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and access to
fellowship literature (e.g., The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, The 12 Steps and 12
Traditions) may be an optional component of treatment but is neither mandatory nor the
sole basis through which treatment is delivered.

21. Immediately eliminate all involuntary addiction treatment. Involuntary treatment is

inherently violent, disregards basic human rights to autonomy and self-determination, and
is used to target racialized and marginalized communities.

These measures will ensure that people pursuing support for reducing or eliminating their drug
consumption will have access to programs and services that are grounded in contemporary
scientific evidence. This will in turn reduce the risk of exacerbating the trauma, social isolation,
and fatal overdoses that are associated with BC’s current treatment landscape.

Proclamations or Guiding Principles

Drug use is morally neutral

The meanings attached to drug use have varied cross-culturally and over time. Historically, many
communities consumed drugs for pleasure, relaxation, and spiritual purposes. Conversely, drug
prohibition is relatively new. It only gained significant traction in the 19th and early 20th centuries,
when alcohol bans were first imposed on Indigenous populations in the 1876 Indian Act. Opium
and cannabis were then purposefully linked to Chinese, Indigenous, Black, and other racialized
communities. Since then, Canadian governments have leveraged the moral panics they create
about drugs and drug users to justify the displacement and criminalization of marginalized groups
within and beyond the boundaries of the nation-state.

The legacy of prohibition’s racist origins is still observable when drugs such as fentanyl are framed
by the media and politicians as a “foreign invader.” This narrative implies that immigrant groups
are a corrupting force that have introduced it into the drug supply. On the other hand, alcohol is
now legally regulated, socially acceptable, and a source of enormous profit for the private sector.
Canada and BC’s ever-shifting legal and regulatory frameworks for substances say little about the
chemical composition of drugs; rather, they are mapped onto prevailing (White) cultural attitudes
and dominant class interests.

Many harms that are commonly attributed to drug use are derived from prohibitionist drug policy
environments

All drug use is associated with some risk. However, the majority of harms linked to illegal drug
use are derived from prohibitionist drug policy environments. The Iron Law of Prohibition posits
that the more intensely a substance is criminalized, the more manufacturers, transporters, and
distributors adulterate it to evade detection, and the more potent, unpredictable and dangerous it
becomes.7 There are strong correlations documented between enhanced enforcement efforts,
transnational organized criminal activity, and supply chain fluctuations that increase drug toxicity.
This culminates in thousands of needless deaths every year in Canada alone.8

In addition to increasing the toxicity of the illegal drug market, the twin policy models of drug
criminalization and medicalization promote stigma, discrimination, and societal exclusion. 9 Both
models undermine user autonomy, promote negative interactions with police, the medical system,
and other social institutions, and encourage isolated drug use. This triggers a cascade of
consequences in the realms of health, housing, employment, criminal justice, and interpersonal
relationships. We contend that policy responses to drug use should be moved firmly outside the
confines of the criminal justice and medical systems. The elimination of institutional coercion
would allow people to speak frankly and transparently about their drug consumption patterns
without fear of reprisal. It would also reduce taxpayer burden by saving costs on enforcement,
emergency response, and untreated injuries10 while improving public health and safety for
everyone.11

Types of personal drug use varies greatly

It is a myth that all illegal drug use is problematic. As with alcohol, many if not most people use
illegal drugs episodically or recreationally. Seventy to 90 percent of people who use stigmatized
drugs do not ever meet the formal criteria for a substance use disorder (SUD),12 a statistic that is
replicated among populations who are highly marginalized and subjected to prolonged and
intensive institutionalized surveillance (e.g., incarcerated or formerly incarcerated groups). 13
Patterns of chaotic or compulsive use tend to develop in response to regimes of austerity and
neoliberalism that drive poverty, homelessness, and related forms of oppression. For example,
evictions are strongly linked to disruptions in drug use patterns and the use of methamphetamine
to stay alert while navigating extreme hardship.14

Increased drug use and is also correlated with exposure to stigma and discrimination within the
employment, education, medical, criminal-judicial, and family welfare systems.15 The academic
literature on stigma emphasizes that negative perceptions of oneself as an “addict” are reified
through processes of interpersonal interaction; people are more likely to report “spontaneous
remission” from addiction when they do not engage with the medical system, a fact that highlights
the extent to which societal scripts about drug use are imbued with value judgements that shape
drug-related behaviours.16 It is imperative that people who use drugs be empowered to decide for
themselves whether their use constitutes a problem and, if it does, to pursue forms of voluntary
care that are suited to their unique needs and circumstances. Most importantly, housing,
employment, and other opportunities for full social participation should never be contingent upon
permanently abstaining from all drug use.

Medical institutions can create harms that parallel those of the criminal justice and legal systems

The fields of medicine and public health have been complicit in the surveillance and
disempowerment of drug users. The perception of medicine as a “kinder, gentler” agent of social
control has enabled inpatient and outpatient addiction treatment to evade substantive regulatory
oversight, sometimes with disastrous results.17 This is because substance use interventions rarely
account for personal patterns of use, cultural values and beliefs, or the social determinants of
health18 and because most are administered through a rigid and outdated “one size fits all'' model
that overwhelmingly encourages abstinence.19 Medical programs that rely on simplistic
assumptions about individual motivation and behavioural change often adopt policies that blur the
line between encouragement and coercion.20 Many service users report that medical interventions
for drug use are distinct from the criminal justice and legal interventions in name only.21

Moreover, the proliferation of substance use disorder” (SUD) designations in recent years may
undermine progress. SUDs are defined through highly contentious debates within the medical and
scientific communities. There is widespread disagreement among researchers and clinicians about
the appropriateness of relying on self-reporting for making diagnoses.22 Diagnostic questionnaires
emphasize legal, employment, or interpersonal problems related to substance use, the responses to
which are shaped by one’s network relationships, neighborhood characteristics, and the drug
policy environment they are embedded in.Ibid What is more, the utility of SUD labels for reducing
drug-related stigma is contested.23 Paradoxically, research demonstrates that in contexts where
SUDs are broadly considered mental illnesses, as awareness of drug-related stigma increases, so
too does drug-related stigma.24 This finding can be partially explained by SUD’s associations with
irrationality and unpredictability.25 Several studies have found that biological causal explanations
of drug use invoke stereotypes of dangerousness, instigate rejection tendencies among the public,
and promote artificial divisions between “healthy” non-drug users and “sick” drug users.26

Against this backdrop, clinicians and prescribers wield immense power. This is partly due to the
fact that SUD diagnoses are a prerequisite to acquiring prescription-based alternatives to the legal
drug supply (“safe supply”), and because those seeking safe supply are subjected to the human
biases of prescribers.27 Cultural norms within medicine that encourage front-line personnel to view
drug users with suspicion also prevent therapeutic rapport-building between patients and providers
and may incentivize drug users to exaggerate or conceal information about their personal patterns
of use.28 For the medical system to be truly health-promoting, actors therein must acknowledge
their limitations, and relinquish their role as gatekeepers to a safe and regulated drug supply.

Policing and criminalization have no place in drug policy

Drug use should not be a crime, and the development of drug policies should be wholly decoupled
from policing and the criminal justice system. Criminal justice and public health paradigms are
mutually exclusive, ideologically and practically. The continued involvement of police and
prosecutors in drug policy design and implementation contradicts concurrent efforts to frame drug
use as a public health issue. There is no evidence to suggest that criminalization benefits drug users
or the public. Rather, decades of research traces the multi-causal pathways through which
criminalization fuels anti-drug-user stigma, exacerbates class, race, culture, and gender-based
oppression, and erodes public trust in democratic institutions. We envision a renewed commitment
from governments to creating a drug policy environment that is endorsed by those with relevant
expertise; namely, drug users, their allies, and those who possess the skills, knowledge, and
relationships to foreground health and safety absent of police or prosecutorial input.

Policy responses to drug use must be grounded in contemporary best practices and empirical
evidence

Drug policy making is a contested space. It is complicated by the need to balance competing values
and weigh contradictory interpretations of what constitutes “evidence.” However, this is not an
excuse for government responses to drug use, addiction, or harms linked to the unregulated drug
supply to be informed solely by ideology or anecdotes. Decision-making processes are marred
when the desire to generate support for one’s political party usurps the results of empirical
research, a trend that has characterized drug-related policy making since the introduction of
prohibition. Sufficient scientific knowledge exists to make drug policy choices that will
predictably achieve their stated public health and safety goals. Debates about drug policy reform
should therefore proceed systematically and transparently, with a concerted effort made by
policymakers and government actors to institutionalize processes of stakeholder interaction that
foreground contemporary evidence.
Government spending on drug-related policies must be transparent, traceable, and accompanied
by publicly available outcome evaluations

It is imperative that all levels of government clearly indicate where and how public funds are being
spent on drug-related initiatives and programming. This includes policies in the domains of
addiction treatment, decriminalization, front-line crisis response, and safe supply. The public must
trust that state resources are not being used to sustain administrative and bureaucratic bloat, or to
prolong interventions that are disproportionate to the scale and scope of the drug toxicity crisis.
Provincial budgets must not merely boast substantial investment in mental health and addictions,
they must also delineate precisely which services are being funded, over what duration, and the
anticipated outcomes for people who use drugs.29

People who use drugs are best suited to describe their needs and must be meaningfully
foregrounded at every stage of policy development, implementation, and evaluation

Robust inclusion of people who use drugs in the making of drug policies is a prerequisite for
successful policy reform. All drug-related policies should be developed by foregrounding the
perspectives and experiential expertise of people who use drugs. BC is fortunate to count a diverse
network of urban and rural drug user groups among its community members. Their life-saving
work must be celebrated, and their insights weighted above institutional actors for whom drug use
is merely political or theoretical. Policies are more likely to be effective, comprehensive, and
equitable when they are led by impacted communities and fully honour the rallying cry, “Nothing
about us without us.”

References

1. Susan C. Boyd, “History of drug policy in Canada”, online, (n.d.),

<https://drugpolicy.ca/about/history/>.
2. Aliza Cohen, Sheila P. Vakharia, Julie Netherland, and Kassandra Frederique, “How the
war on drugs impacts social determinants of health beyond the criminal legal system,”
(online), 2022, Annals of Medicine, 54(1), doi: 10.1080/07853890.2022.2100926.
3. Health Canada Expert Task Force on Substance Use, “Report 1: Recommendations on
alternatives to criminal penalties for simple possession of controlled substances,” online,
(May 6, 2021), <https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/corporate/about-health-
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4. Canadian Association of Police Chiefs Special Purpose Committee on the
Decriminalization of Illicit Drugs, “Decriminalization for simple possession of illicit
 drugs: Exploring impacts on public safety & policing,” online, (July 2020), <
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5. B.C. Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, “More than 2,500 lives lost to toxic
drugs in 2023,” online, (Jan. 24, 2024), <
https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024PSSG0001000069>
6. Disability Alliance of B.C. “The punishing bureaucracy of welfare: Policy
recommendations to Improve income assistance provision in B.C. online (April 30, 2023),
https://disabilityalliancebc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/FINAL_POVERTY-
REDUCTION-SUBMISSION-1.pdf
7. The Iron Law of Prohibition is a term that was coined by drug policy reform activist
Richard Cowan in 1986. It is based on a mathematical equation and states that a fixed cost
(e.g., transportation cost) added to the price of two varieties of the same product causes
manufacturers and sellers to prioritize sales of the more expensive variety. Applied to
drugs, distributors increase their potency to offset the expenditures associated with evading
detection. See for e.g., Leo Beletsky and Corey S. Davis, “Today's fentanyl crisis:
Prohibition's Iron Law, revisited,” (online), 2017, International Journal of Drug Policy, 46,
doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2017.05.050.
8. For a global perspective on the links between drug prohibition, organized crime, and drug
supply chain toxicity, see: Global Commission on Drug Policy, “Enforcement of Drug
Laws: Refocusing on Organized Crime Elites,” online, (2020),
<https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/FINAL-
EN_2020report_web.pdf>
9. Mark Tyndall and Zoe Dodd, “How structural violence, prohibition, and stigma have
paralyzed North American responses to opioid overdose,” online, (Aug. 2020), AMA
Journal of Ethics Policy Forum, <https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-
structural-violence-prohibition-and-stigma-have-paralyzed-north-american-responses-
opioid/2020-08>
10. Canadian Substance Use Costs and Harms Scientific Working Group, “Canadian substance
use costs and harms 2007–2020” (Prepared by the Canadian Institute for Substance Use
Research and the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction), online, (2023),
<https://csuch.ca/documents/reports/english/Canadian-Substance-Use-Costs-and-Harms-
Report-2023-en.pdf>
11. Nick Werle and Ernesto Zedillo, “We can’t go cold turkey”: Why suppressing drug markets
endangers society,” online, (Summer 2018), Opioids, Law, and Ethics, 46,
<https://ycsg.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/we_can't_go_cold_turkey.pdf>
12. Carl L. Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges
Everything You Know About Drugs and Society (2013) in: Carl. L. Hart, “Exaggerating
harmful drug effects on the brain is killing black people,” online, (July 01, 2020),
Neuroview, 107(2), <https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(20)30473-
 6?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS089
6627320304736%3Fshowall%3Dtrue>
13. A recent study that examined rates of opioid use disorder (OUD) and stimulant use disorder
(SUD) among people who have histories of incarceration Heather Palis, Wenqi Gan, Chloe
Xavier, Roshni Desai, Marnie Scow, Kali-olt Sedgemore, Leigh Greiner, Tonia Nicholls,
and Amanda Slaunwhite, “Association of Opioid and Stimulant Use Disorder Diagnoses
With Fatal and Nonfatal Overdose Among People With a History of Incarceration,” online,
(Nov. 2022), JAMA Open Network, PMC9685494,
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9685494/>
14. Ryan McNeil, Taylor Fleming, Alexandra B. Collins, Sandra Czechaczek, Samara Mayer,
and Jade Boyd, “Navigating post-eviction drug use amidst a changing drug supply: A
spatially-oriented qualitative study of overlapping housing and overdose crises in
Vancouver, Canada,” online, (May 01, 2021), Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 222,
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871621001617>
15. Amir-Hossein Bayat, Rasool Mohammadi, Mohammad Moradi-Joo, Azadeh Bayani,
Elahe Ahounbar, Peter Higgs, Morteza Hemmat, Amin Haghgoo, and Bahram Armoon,
“HIV and drug related stigma and risk-taking behaviors among people who inject drugs: a
systematic review and meta-analysis,” online (Jan. 31, 2020), Journal of Addictive
Diseases, <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bahram-
Armoon/publication/338958561_HIV_and_drug_related_stigma_and_risk-
taking_behaviors_among_people_who_inject_drugs_a_systematic_review_and_meta-
analysis/links/5f12995e4585151299a4b2d6/HIV-and-drug-related-stigma-and-risk-
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analysis.pdf>
16. Danielle Scarscelli, “Drug addiction between deviance and normality: A study of
spontaneous and assisted remission,” online (June 2006), Contemporary Drug Problems,
33(2), <https://journals-sagepub-
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17. See for e.g., Moira Wyton, “Survivors, former staff say recovery homes ignored years of
reports about employee charged with sexual assault,” online (June 7, 2023), CBC,
<https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/adam-haber-survivors-say-recovery-
houses-ignored-reports-for-years-1.6866529
18. Cameron Wild, Yan Yuan, Brian R. Rush, and Karen A. Urbanoski. “Client engagement
in legally-mandated addiction treatment: A prospective study using self-determination
theory,” online (Oct. 2016), Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 69,
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740547215300714?via%3Dihub>
19. See for e.g., Bethany Lindsay, “Concerns raised over B.C. funding for addiction treatment
in facilities requiring 12 step programs,” online (March 27, 2021), CBC
<https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-addiction-treatment-funding-12-
steps-1.5964975>
20. Cameron Wild, “Social control and coercion in addiction treatment: towards evidence-
based policy and practice,” online (Jan. 2006), Addiction, 101(1),
<https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16393190/>
21. Jennifer M. Kilty, “‘It’s like they don’t want you to get better’: Psy control of women in
the carceral context,” online (April 2012), Feminism and Psychology, 22(2),
<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353512439188>
22. A. Thomas McLellan, “Substance Misuse and Substance use Disorders: Why do they
Matter in Healthcare?” online (2017), Trans Am Clin Climatol Assoc., 128,
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5525418/>
23. Nancy Campbell, “Toward a critical neuroscience of ‘addiction,” online (2010),
BioSocieties, 5,
<https://www.academia.edu/5064025/Toward_a_critical_neuroscience_of_addiction>
24. Carla Meurk, Adrian Carter, Brad Partridge, Jayne Lucke, and Wayne Hall, “How is
acceptance of the brain disease model of addiction related to Australians’ attitudes towards
addicted individuals and treatments for addiction?” online (Dec. 2014), BMC Psychiatry,
14, <https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-014-0373-
x#:~:text=Advocates%20argue%20that%20acceptance%20of,brain%27s%20reward%20
system%20%5B4%5D.>
25. Daniel Z. Buchman, Judy Illes, and Peter B. Reiner, “The paradox of addiction
neuroscience,” online (June 2010), Neuroethics, 4
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-010-9079-z>
26. Erlend P. Kvaale, Nick Haslam, and William H. Gottdiener, “The ‘side effects’ of
medicalization: A meta-analytic review of how biogenetic explanations affect stigma,”
online (Aug. 2013), Clinical Psychology Review, 33(6),
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272735813000883?fr=RR-
2&ref=pdf_download&rr=802170081d90682e>
27. Ryan McNeil, Taylor Fleming, Samara Mayer, Allison Barker, Manal Monsoor, Alex
Betsos, Tamar Austin, “Implementation of Safe Supply Alternatives During Intersecting
COVID-19 and Overdose Health Emergencies in British Columbia, Canada, 2021,” online,
(March 29, 2022), AJPH,
<https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306692>
28. For instance, unfounded reporting about safe supply consumers “diverting” their
prescriptions to novel drug users have cited select physicians as anonymous sources.
29. Most recently, the BCNDP budget was framed as including substantial investment in
mental health and addictions. However, it failed to delineate precisely which services are
being funded, for how much, over what duration, and the anticipated outcomes for people
who use drugs.